I had to do a double take when I saw Ewan Took’s post over at SLUniverse: “BBC asks “Whatever happened to Second Life?” Initially I thought it was a really old necropost because I’ve read an article along those lines on the BBC before: What happened to Second Life?
However no, this wasn’t the 2009 article I’d read before, this was a news story from today and why is Second Life being talked about today? Well because Second Life’s tenth birthday is making news, that’s why. The updated Second Life Tenth Birthday edition of “Whatever Happened To Second Life” can be viewed here.
The blurb:
“Ten years ago, a social media website was launched which some corporations thought would change the face of business forever.
It was called Second Life – a virtual world where users could live, meet, go shopping or make music and art.
Multi-nationals like IBM rushed to be part of it and countries even opened embassies there.
But what has become of Second Life?”
Unfortunately the video doesn’t tell us what has become of Second Life, however being as it’s a Beeb article it is fair and balanced, they feature Redzone and then someone saying everyone has moved on. However the Redzone they talk of isn’t the controversial security system, it’s a band who play live in Second Life and this Beeb story exemplifies how good a use case Second Life can be for musicians, which is something to be welcomed.
The other side is that apparently everyone has moved to Facebook or Twitter, although as far as I’m aware, IBM still have a presence in Second Life.
I think this one should be filed under “There’s no such thing as bad publicity“. Second Life is in the news, the tenth birthday celebrations are making people sit up and take note, plenty of people won’t be able to understand why Second Life has made it to its tenth birthday, but it has.
Incidentally, the original BBC article I talked about will be four years old this coming November, so nearly four years of the Beeb asking what happened to Second Life, and it’s still here hey! Maybe the Beeb should come and make some media stories inworld to understand what has happened.
Part of the feeling I got from the article was that the corporates had followed the “fashionable” element of the net, which Second Life attracted for a while. They hinted at the steep learning curve, and suggested that the corporate customer-chase into such social media sites as Facebook was being done less enthusiastically: lower budgets and lower expectations.
IBM was the only corporate mentioned by name, and they are one which spends on research. Most of what they talked about was essentially advertising.
To them, perhaps Second Life is the rather foolish boom, rather than the far less simple continuing reality.
Part of the problem I had with the article was that it was so short. The Beeb have to be fair and balanced, which is why they included the band as a plus point, but the whole article was negative for no good reason.
Adobe and IBM still use Second Life as far as I’m aware, maybe it’s not the place people thought it would be but it’s far from going away.